Edward J. Pluchar - The Blogsplitter

I use Facebook in spite of myself.  The best thing they ever did was institute the “Pirate” language.  It’s a long way down to the second best thing, which is probably allowing people to keep the rights to their own pictures.  (Oh, that is no longer an inalienable right?  Oh my.)

On my sidebar today, along with suggested friends, is a picture of my aunt.  (By the way - why would they keep suggesting the same friends when I X them out, with vigor?)  The caption to this little widget is, “Help them find their friends.”  Then, of course, you can click on “Suggest friends for them.”

Not only do they make my aunt out to be a social incompetent, or perhaps a toddler, but they say it twice for effect.  Then, there’s the stupefying use of “them” for a pronoun.  Is it so difficult to reference a member’s profile in order to fill in the gender?  You can generate complex analyses of my “likes” and sell the results to third parties but you can’t identify my aunt as “her”?

Now tell me - is that the correct use of “widget”?

I’m on a job search, and a friend asked whether I would consider teaching again.  She followed up, “Do you have your ed degree?  (that’s funny because your name is Ed).”

That’s when I responded with the title to this post.

By far the stupidest joke made about my name is any reference to Mr. Ed.  Fortunately, it’s also the rarest “Ed” joke.

Let’s be honest, though - any occasion of a “Mr. Ed” joke is no laughing matter.  It’s gotta stop, and it starts with you.

Many of the others are derivations of Education, or other words beginning with “ed.”

Luke, our neighbor and so-called friend, is fond of “Special Ed.”

Oh, you should see faces light up when the tiny brain inside stumbles upon “Special Ed.”  You get a sense of what intellectual accomplishment means for a person based on that response.  (Luke, to his credit, never laughed unless he thought he was getting my goat).

I was once asked, if I were a wrestler, what my stage name would be.  I was teaching at the time, so after a moment or two I said, “The ED-ucator.”

Now that’s funny.

I’m a little surprised at a lack of puns based on “ed” as used in the past tense.

Go to the mob and order a hit on me - “Delete-Ed”

But that doesn’t make adequate use of the past tense…let’s see…

Well, it’s tricky, because the word will be past tense, but using it as a command, either to me or about me, changes it to present tense.  You have to be in two places at once, or I do.  Someone does.

Finally, at the risk of my undoing, I’m also surprised at the lack of erectile dysfunction jokes.  It’s possible that, with a child born, certain (correct) assumptions dilute the potential humor of the joke.  It would be funnier if I wasn’t able to procreate.

It’s also possible that an E.D. joke is lower than the lowest common denominator, and almost everyone knows what a stupid joke that would be.

Then again, people really do laugh about “Mr. Ed.”

On the way to Chicago last week, Marcy drove first because I was up most of the previous night.

As I slept in the passenger seat, I would occasionally and suddenly open just one eye when some stimulus prompted me to.  This usually happened whenever Marcy was hitting the brakes, but also once when I became conscious of Celine Dion, still singing.  I opened my eye just to see which track the CD was on - it was Track 9.  I smiled, because this meant I had effectively slept through 5 songs.

When we took a break at a rest stop, I staggered out of the car, still drowsy.  The urinals in the men’s room were straight ahead from the entrance, and the rest of the bathroom bent around to the right.  I took the first urinal.

There are noises all around a busy restroom, and suddenly I heard the door opening behind me.  This is where my behavior becomes inexcusable.

I fully twisted my torso around, maintaining the critical position but still awkwardly reaching back with my eyes to see who was coming in.  The newcomer noticed me, and when he did I nodded, then returned to my normal position.

No man.

All wrong.

You don’t greet people coming into the men’s room, much less while conducting business.  And what’s with the human pretzel act?

I think other men around the world must have felt a chill at that precise moment, so I apologize.

I hate the Cubs.

“NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — I predict that the Cubs will win the World Series — the 2008 World Series, that is. When a team hasn’t won its league championship in exactly 100 years, like the Cubs of Major League Baseball, you need to be specific.”

Didn’t he read my earlier blog post about fools in the financial industry muddying the waters of my baseball dreams?

Probably, and he references me and others (probably Chris and Fish) a little later…

“I am expecting the Cubs to beat the American League’s Los Angeles Angels in the World Series. Knowledgeable Cub fans, naturally, hate my guts for printing those words. [Editor's note: I HOPE YOU BURN ETERNALLY!] It’s nothing personal (in most cases) — it’s just business.

“You see, Cub fans are pessimists by nature. It freaks them out to hear someone proclaim that the Cubs are about to win the World Series. By saying it out loud, you have jinxed their heroes beyond repair. They are superstitious, bordering on pathological. Still, who can blame them? They’ve seen their beloved team go down in flames too many times.”

Well how nice of you to demonstrate some understanding of the situation - Doesn’t that make your sin more grievous?!?!

You know what, everybody - EVERYBODY - in the finance industry: I don’t care how the Cubs’ pursuit of (far from a guarantee, the baseball gods should hear me say) a World Series Championship touches down in the “real world,” or at least your world, which right now looks like it was a fantasy land stilted by lies and cunning until America finally noticed the cookies missing from the cookie jar. I don’t care that you realize you’re making a gaffe, and may have more or less reasonable excuses for doing so anyway. Let me put it to you this way…

I witnessed the Cubs fall apart against the Marlins despite incredible circumstances, my girlfriend (and now wife) and I broke up in the same year, and this year I’ve seen my investments in your stock market fall sharply. That last one doesn’t compare to the other two, so right away you are relieved of your need even to speak about either, and between the other two, (at the time, I must be careful to say), I could not tell the difference in the degree of my misery.

Careful now, or Cub fans will start taking sides in the stock market, and then the whole thing will collapse amid strange and inexplicable circumstances. Then we’ll see if you’re still smiling in your column portrait.

My chair has an air leak.  It is currently nonfunctional.

O, if I felt good enough to say I was only depressed!

But seriously, Joe made the very good (I think) suggestion that I use those kits for flat tires to fill the hole(s), and then re-inflate.  Since I doubt I can get my money back, and since the pressure in this chair is not comparable to a car tire, I suspect this could work.

More later.

My regular chair sucks.

“There’s bitter disappointment, and then there’s what the Cubs do to me.”  - Adam Fischer

As can be heard from the land where hats are never worn straight and people layer the clothing on their heads, “Holla.”

This video isn’t hilarious, but it’s funny. Unintentionally funny, of course.

Here’s my list of problems with and suggestions for this video to be taken more seriously:

1) Get a cooler dude, even if he’s faking the astrophysics background.

2) Try a little harder to convince me that you’re calculating the kind of collision that might occur between two galaxies and yet you don’t know where our solar system will be in relation to the impact.

3) Maybe the time for this report just isn’t right - You tell me the end of the galaxy is coming one day, when Andromeda collides with the Milky Way - in 3 billion years. I still am in no hurry to go streaking at a Major League baseball game.

4a) Speaking of #2 - Try a little harder to convince me that freezing to death is a much better scenario than boiling to death. Apparently the best case scenario is that we’ll be tossed off into space, away from the collision, and the worst case is that we’ll be thrown between two black holes merging into one. I don’t really imagine a difference in the amount of pain my body might feel.

4b) Furthermore, does anyone really need a computer to determine that life on Earth will probably be completely exterminated? Or was everyone waiting anxiously for Dubinski to compare our planet to a piece of burnt bread?

5) Fake fireworks to demonstrate supernovas?

6) Seriously, you went with Dubinski as your one and only authority?

Even on a finance-based website, they’re talking about the Cubs going to the World Series.

The nerve of this guy, who brazenly admits he’s jinxing the Cubs, but acts as though jinxes don’t matter.